Is your Company “Sinking” or “Synching”?

Good Data

Is your Company “Sinking” or “Synching”?

By Josh Wall, AgGateway’s AGIIS Product Manager

I have a teenager in my home and am starting to realize the importance of a family calendar. My little girl, who once had an occasional play date or a trip to Grandma’s on her calendar, now has a schedule that has exploded into a complex matrix of “can’t miss” activities. The challenge is how to keep track of all the activities and logistically get her to and from camps, practices, volunteer opportunities, weightlifting and now work! At first, it seemed our family was on a sinking ship, but in our modern-day era of cell phones and calendar apps, the ability for us all to stay on the same page is doable. Believe it or not, most nights we all have dinner together as a family because our schedules are synchronized, and everything is smooth sailing.

I sometimes wonder if the ag industry has a similar – albeit exponentially more enormous – problem of sinking under the weight of a complex matrix of data. Consider the vast amount of data being generated daily, from multiple sources, being routed into a data warehouse. (The words, “Big Data” come to mind.) The common misconception is that this data can be easily used for strategic business decisions, resolving all the challenges facing a company. But the reality is that companies often find themselves sinking in this digital age, even with all this data at their fingertips. The challenge, not unlike my family’s, is to get the data synchronized so it makes sense and decisions can be made rapidly and accurately.

This is where AgGateway adds value to its members. AgGateway members are developing, utilizing and leveraging standards and identifiers to improve business processes, allowing them to make strategic decisions and providing innovative solutions for an ever-changing landscape. AgGateway’s Ag Industry Identification System (AGIIS) is a key conduit in delivering a common set of identifiers and data elements to foster seamless exchange of business information among trading partners.

Using the AGIIS database, companies identify an entity by using a standard unique entity identifier (Global Location Number) and product identifier (Global Trade Item Number) in eConnectivity transactions. AGIIS has several resources that make it easy for subscribers to share information with their trading partners during data synchronization activities and to support ongoing synchronization maintenance. The AgGateway staff has put together AGIIS Synchronization and AGIIS Product Synchronization white papers that provide some helpful tips regarding synchronization of entities and products.

If your organization is tired of “sinking” and wants to start sailing, contact AgGateway’s Member Services at Member.Services@aggateway.org or at (+1) 866-251-8618 to learn more about data synchronization, unique identifiers (AGIIS) and eConnectivity projects.